Hancock Lumber's Kevin Hancock on the Death Tax

The Heritage Foundation has a video interview with Kevin Hancock, part of the sixth generation of the family that owns Hancock Lumber, with 15,000 acres of timber and 3 sawmills in Maine: "It makes no sense to have a capital gains tax at 15% and an estate tax, say, at 45%. In that example, if you sell your company, you get a 15% tax. If you try to keep your company, keep working, keep going, you get a 45% tax. What the federal government is effectively doing is offering a major tax discount to sell your family business as opposed to keep it. I can't think of any tax structure more backward than that." I could do without the references to Wall Street and Hollywood at the beginning of the video and without the environmental scare that the estate tax is going to force the Hancocks to sell off their timberland to housing developers, but it's interesting stuff, and pretty compelling overall.